1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image output apparatus and a camera, and more particularly to an image processing apparatus, an image output apparatus and a camera capable of determining conditions for processing, outputting and inputting an image based on depth information extracted from a parallactic image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a technique is known to extract image characteristics from a photographed image and process the image in accordance with the extracted image characteristics. This technique is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication (Kokai) H7-200824. However, information obtained from the image characteristics is not enough. Therefore, when a lot of people are in the image, it is difficult to separately recognize faces of people which are partially overlapping. It means that it is difficult to process each of the components in the image in accordance with different conditions, based on the image characteristics.
Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication (Kokai) H5-196857 discloses a technique to control exposure of an image based on a main object in the image. The main object is extracted from the image by setting a plurality of measuring points, and detecting variation of the data at the measuring points per predetermined period, using a conventional triangulation method. This technique uses infrared radiation for measuring the distance to each of the components in the image
However, it was difficult to increase the measuring points because the directivity of the infrared radiation is limited. Therefore, the main object cannot be precisely extracted.